


Four letter words for war

by vhis



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Desperation, F/M, Loss, M/M, Season 4 trailer, So much angst, Unspoken words, Words, season 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-13
Updated: 2016-11-13
Packaged: 2018-08-30 18:34:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8544586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vhis/pseuds/vhis
Summary: The trailer happened and this had to come to page, because we all need more pain, right? Another four letter word.





	

They made love that day, unhurried and unapologetic, even if maybe a little breathless. The light poured inside, in shades of red and they knew it was the day pleading to be over, in rhythm with their own finishing moans, breathed in warm skin and dirtied sheets.

He had been careful, all the way. With the body under his body, with the thoughts inside his own skull, with the words slipping from his tongue here and there, in careful whispers. It was a relief, one to be considered a prize, the beginning of the idea of a home, of victory.

 Even here, in the temporary silence of the horehouse they fought so hard to conquer, the frenzy of it all discarded on the wooden floor along with clothes and a little-maybe a little-pull to something else. Just like then, at the beginning of it all, when covered in pleasure and the moving tendrils of warmth, the stolen page kept part of his mind away.

And he feels tired, spent, mellow, but mostly, he feels misplaced, like the bullets that grazed his skin and the sharp edges of cutlasses kept parts of him, scattered on the battlefield, and the longing, unquiet longing inside him is that, has to be that, the call of his body to the droplets of blood lost out there.

He doesn’t know he’s restless-or doesn’t focus on it- until Madi places her fingers, royal and delicate, on his back. That’s when he wakes-startles-and his hands tremble as he removes them from his face, and they’re wet and it’s not the blood-he hopes it is, still on him-but it’s much worse.

“John…” she calls to him but he responds to something else entirely, the beating of his heart, beat after beat, like knot after knot in a never-ending rope, measuring faster and faster, the distance to- _oh_.  He grabs the end of that imaginary rope with both hands, the desperation so acute it’s manifested in his body.

“John!” loudly now, but she can’t reach him, not here, where she can’t possibly know how to descend into these depths. “Go if you have to,” she whispers and he’s not entitled to forgive, but he forgives her the moment she says it, because all she does is offer a place to resurface, a place he knows for sure he’s not worthy of. Or wants to –knows to- come back to.

 And he doesn’t-he doesn’t call it running, because he can’t do that now anymore, but his mind runs there before his feet-foot-can follow, pulling at the invisible rope, measures of it snaking their way around his throat and it may be the lack of oxygen, but it may as well be the blood rushing faster than he can imagine speed.

It’s dark now and he should fall, but he never considers it, the fall, because how much deeper can one go?  He should knock, but he never considers it, because how can someone-else-be there, inside his victorious room. He’s right, he’s always right and right now the high of it doesn’t come, but calm does, as if this place was waiting, even if the green eyes across the room weren’t.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” and it could mean the horehouse, but he knows better, and it’s no more than a few words, so how can they contains so much anger and confusion and …hope.

“Was it a warning or a welcome?” he asks, hand still on the door knob - an anchor- because he needs it, or else he’ll drift inside, into the storm, and it’s useless, really , because the storm is coming for him and he knows with calm clarity Flint doesn’t even know he’s moving. Just as he knows he’ll need to meet him half way, or else-

“Tell me,” and if comes out a little pleading, well.

Flint abandons the towel, too small and hopelessly bloodied, his skin covered in shadows and nuances, just like the man himself, and John can’t wait for him to decide -growls to meet his silence- not this time, and not because he needs the answer to be one he expects, but because he _needs._

He lets go of the door, the sound of it closing after being pushed just a distant sound against the howling of his breath against those silent lips.

It’s just a press of lips, like any other encounter between them, but those in words more quiet than this in touch, it’s immensely charged with opposing forces, arguments and underlying meaning and John can’t remember to breathe around it, despises it, its power to reduce him to silence.

“Fuck you, James Flint,” he spits in the scorching space he makes, retreating, when those lips don’t move, the body doesn’t move, so he sinks his nails in the back of Flint’s neck and looks at him, daring him, one last time-why does it feel like the last time?-to go against him or himself.

The room burns, the night burns, the wounds burn, the end burns to catch up with him, to change him completely, but nothing burns as consuming as the flame in Flint’s eyes and his body. All this time and he feels like a match carbonized and deformed by flame.

And if the captain trembles, he knows it’s not the temperature, and he wishes, for once, for all that containment to just fucking break, to kill or take, he’s beyond the point of caring. But Flint just stays there, staring him down, an expression that makes this all new and he knows it’s selfish, still, this need, but maybe-

“One victory is not enough for you, Long John Silver?” the man whispers and John wants to punch him, but that would bring some truth to the false, so false statement, so instead he lets go of that skin and muscle and starts to undress.

“If you’re going to ask What the fuck I’m doing, again…” he mumbles, more to distract himself, do be doing something while he balances the scales, nakedness to nakedness, equality-

“Stop,” and a hand grabs his wrist near the breeches, definitive and angry. “Whatever you think you’re doing, whatever this is…just stop. I’m not part of the spoils of war,” and it may be the defeated tone, but it may just as well be the hotness of the words whispered close and wet in his ear, but John decides not to listen. He peals away the hand and continues, until he’s naked, uncovered, revealed and he lays on the bed, knuckles white on the grey of the sheets.

“Does … _this_ look to you as the victor?” he asks, bitter, eyes on the floor. “You gave me an idea of what you expected, and I know this is not it, so far from it even _I_ can feel the loss, but this …this is what you _can_ have... If you want it- _me._ ” And the doubt was not part of the plan, but then again, “I’m here” and it’s hard to be the legend woven by Billy and his resistance when you give yourself, with the wounds and the half leg and this all consuming need and you expect, only as a possibility, to be rejected. “So _please_ …”

The hand on his thigh startles John from the depths of his fall and those eyes changed, but he still knows them. Feels like forever. Crouched in front of him, Flint noses on the sensitive skin there and _oh, God_ , he shouldn’t react like this, the trembling back and the sense of relief so overwhelming it makes his ears ring. He starts to say something –another plea?- but a hand climbs and covers his mouth, just barely, and who knew this needn’t be another war.

“You smell of her,” Flint says, too small to indicate any feeling, and John wants to ask forgiveness anyway  but-his cock is taken in to cover words and the warmth makes his head spin and he can’t think of what to say, it feels both too late and too early for other words.

He knew what he asked. The pull to this room, this man, too strong and immediate to even leave him time to imagine it, so now, that it happens, he feels unprepared, for once, for the result of his own desires. He moans and grips every patch of skin, _closer, closer,_ like the separation of this desire in two different bodies is inconceivable, unbearable and his eyes close in the face of this too much, too little, too definitive surrender.

When he opens them, Flint is under him, somehow, and he hates it, the blackout in his brain –how dare you – that robs him of every single thing passed between them in this. He’s angry and sad, so sad it scratches at his soul, and so desperate to-

“Let go,” he hears and Christ, it’s what he does. Let’s himself be guided inside that ruined, glorious body, finds his completion there and who cares that it’s the definitive image of him in darkness, it’s right and he fits, silently, muffled by Flints mouth, into a place left opened for him, the perfect shape of all he’s missing inside.

He comes and it feels like screaming, the end of it, the unexpected need to come back, replay this, over and over, a loop of only them and their demons.  But Flint is whispering in his hair and the contrast to his screams is deafening in his chest. “John,” he hears and it’s then when he hides, broken sounds of denial, into the freckled skin of this man who made him, unmade him and made him again.

“You’re leaving,” he says later, when the caresses stop and it frightens him, the truth he recognizes behind that statement, the certainty in him, even before Flint moves to look into his eyes and “It’s over,” and he wants to hear that sentence end with _the war_ , but his entire body hears it as _us, us, us._

“Is this how it feels like?” and he hopes Flint understands, he’ll make an effort to understand, because he can’t say it out loud, not before, not now, not ever.

“What _do_ you feel?” and the kisses, light on skin, are punches from his inside, maddening boom boom boom in his bones.

“Like I can’t think of other stories to tell, like even if I do, they won’t matter, like I don’t want to-“ and he stops because he can’t speak around the tremble in him, but there’s a tongue pushing on his, so that’s a better excuse and he’ll take it.

“You’ll think of something,” and Flint leaves and he can’t, he can’t-

“James!” and it’s not his voice calling, it’s the voice of someone worthy and familiar to the man he calls on, and that man is not his captain, his partner, he’s a lover and God, why so late…

“Do you feel it too? Tell me and I swear I’ll stop you. You know I can.”

The ephemeral white of the shirt makes it surreal, the curves, the skin, the expression on that face. They look at each other, a space to be filled with every conversation they ever had, from distant to deceiving to contrary to things left unsaid and then James smiles, something so foreign and fleeting and not ever enough and John’s stump aches, his bloodied nails hurt, his bitten neck, his swollen lips, his blurry eyes, everything but a void space in the middle of his chest and a little to the left, where nothing can possibly reside.

“Yes, that’s how loss feels like,” and he gathers the rest of his clothes, pauses at the door, but in the end leaves without a goodbye and John can’t move, can’t think, can’t be angry.

“I meant…love,” he mouths, powerless to form audible words, but there’s nobody there to hear him anyway, to answer him or laugh at him. He just stares at that door and hates it, deeply and brightly, like he hated the saw they used to separate his foot from him.

Later, in a tavern he owns, runs and uses to spin tales, Madi still royal and warm and understanding as he wakes up followed by dreams, tremors and gasps, he understands that answer. It comes late, but the blow is as painful as if made on a fresh wound: they were talking about the same thing. But as he questioned and tried to name it, James Flint was already resigning himself to live without it. Again.  

 

  


End file.
